I Need A Numbers GURU....

Question

I am new to Mac but well versed with IT in general. Creating a numbers spreadsheet in OSX (newest version). Here is the basic idea:
I have one table (call it data) in which each row has a drop down box with 9 possible "style" choices. Then each choice has 3 other related columns: width & height & United Inches.
There are separate static tables for each "style" that house a list of United Inch ranges appropriate to that "style" with an associated price to each.
There is another table (call it formulas) that houses the reference to each "style" static table and a formula (nested IF's) to compare the United Inch from the "data" table to the United Inch ranges housed in the proper static "style" tables. (ex: 0-10, 11-19, 20-33, etc etc)
Goal:To call a function that will find the "Style" selected from "data" drop down box, capture the United Inch for that style input, go to the proper static lookup table for that "style" and compare the United Inch to the ranges & return a specified value based on the comparison result. (FYI: I have everything coded and working except the last part...)
Purpose: to avoid a long multiple nested IF statement for each row for style/united inch etc... (if data::a2 < 10, if data::a2<20,etc etc etc) The formula is the same every time for each individual "style" type. The only variable is the United Inch cell reference from the calling row of the "data" table.
Workflow: user selects style from drop down, inputs width & height, United Inch is automatically calculated. In another table "pricing" the function sits. It is to read the "style" cell from the "data" table, compare it against a lookup table to find which static table to search within. Then it takes the "United Inch" field from the "data" table and compares that to each united inch range in the appropriate static table via a static nested IF pulled from the lookup table. When a match is found & returns true, the formula returns the price for that style/UI combo.
Problem: inputing the united inch cell reference from each row of the "data" table into the static IF statement for the proper style type as it is called. I have everything up to he nested IF part figured out.
example:
IF(A1<10, XYZ, IF(A1<20, ABC,IF(A1<30,EFG,none)))
I dont want "A1" to be hard coded. I want to replace it with something that will select the value of proper cell from a row/column reference of the calling row automatically. The column ID is static, just the row changes.
I can just hard code it & be done but I am trying to avoid doing that. This would be simple in a scripting language but not so much in Numbers. Also, I thought about trying to script something but this spreadsheet has to be given out and will run on machines that cant use scripting so I need to find a solution native to to Numbers. Any help is much appreciated. Hope this was descriptive enough? Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello
If I understand it correctly, you may use INDEX() to reference cell, INDIRECT() to reference lookup table and VLOOKUP() to look up the table. Something like this.
Table definitions are as follows.
Formulas
A1    Style
A2    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),1)
A3    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),1)
A4    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),1)
A5    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),1)
B1    United Inches
B2    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),4)
B3    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),4)
B4    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),4)
B5    =INDEX(Data,ROW(),4)
C1    Unit Price
C2    =VLOOKUP(B2,INDIRECT(A2),2,1)
C3    =VLOOKUP(B3,INDIRECT(A3),2,1)
C4    =VLOOKUP(B4,INDIRECT(A4),2,1)
C5    =VLOOKUP(B5,INDIRECT(A5),2,1)
D1    Price
D2    =B2*C2
D3    =B3*C3
D4    =B4*C4
D5    =B5*C5
Data
A1    Style
A2    A
A3    A
A4    B
A5    C
B1    Width
B2    16
B3    12
B4    8
B5    16
C1    Height
C2    20
C3    12
C4    24
C5    16
D1    United Inches
D2    =B2+C2
D3    =B3+C3
D4    =B4+C4
D5    =B5+C5
A
A1    United inches
A2    0
A3    10
A4    20
A5    30
A6    40
B1    Unit Price
B2    10
B3    9
B4    8
B5    7
B6    6
B
A1    United inches
A2    0
A3    10
A4    20
A5    30
A6    40
B1    Unit Price
B2    20
B3    18
B4    16
B5    14
B6    12
C
A1    United inches
A2    0
A3    10
A4    20
A5    30
A6    40
B1    Unit Price
B2    30
B3    27
B4    24
B5    21
B6    18
Hope this may help,
H